Celebrating Carmen DeSousa’s ENTANGLED DREAMS! Enter to win one of her books by leaving a comment below! 🙂

Today I’m highlighting Carmen DeSousa’s third book with 5 Prince Publishing, ENTANGLED DREAMS. Life is not a fairy tale and again, Carmen brings to us likeable characters who are flawed and the reader cheers them on until the end.

When Alexandra Nicole was eight, she thought she was a princess in a fairytale. But after a tragic accident shatters her magical life, she finds herself in a cold and heartless reality.

As an adult, she once again faces harsh truths and decides to take control of her destiny. Unfortunately, choices have a way of entangling her dreams and pushing her down a dark and dismal path.

Alexandra must trust her instincts to escape danger, but be able to surrender all to find her happily ever after. Knowing how to decipher the difference, will be her toughest challenge.

While Carmen DeSousa does not write “Christian” books, she does share her characters’ Christian beliefs. Her characters are real people who come with real flaws; no perfect people allowed.

She characterizes her stories as modern-day fairytales, as they are overflowing with romance, mystery, suspense, and of course, tragedy. After all, what would a fairytale be without a tragic event setting the stage? All of her novels are sensual, but not erotic, gripping but not graphic and will hopefully make you cry, laugh, love, and hope.

As a child, Alexandra Nicole was a princess in a fairytale. Her royal family would spend every Sunday on the pristine beaches of Destin together. Her father, the king, would carry her on his shoulders, pretending to be her noble steed as he pranced around at her behest. He would battle dragons, the vicious Chihuahua that chased them; conquer new worlds, also known as a sand dune further down the beach; and build elaborate castles, well actually, sandcastles.

If her father was the king, then her mother was most definitely the queen. She would laugh softly under her umbrella as she watched Alexandra and her father roll in the gentle surf. When her mother did venture into the crystal-clear waters of the Gulf of Mexico, her long, platinum hair would blow softly in the breeze, her blue eyes sparkled like the water below her, and her skin glistened from the ever-present sunshine in their lives.

But alas, as in any good fairytale, everything good and wonderful must come to an end.

After the tragic accident that snatched her mother away from Alexandra, her father moved them away from the beaches of Destin to another beach in Florida. Cocoa Beach.

Cocoa Beach was loud, the water murky, and there were no weekend adventures as there had been in Destin.

Her father married her evil stepmother, Lilith, who Alexandra was certain was a witch with her long, black as midnight hair and pale-white skin as if she’d never seen sunlight. Her father had admitted he wasn’t in love with Cruella, as she had come to think of the witchy woman, but that he’d wanted Alexandra to have a mother and siblings.

Well, she definitely got that.

The king started staying out later and later at night, and the princess had to do excessive amounts of chores around her new castle. Her stepmother treated her like a pariah; certainly, she’d rather have the dogs at their dinner table. Her stepsisters were ugly inside and out and were forever jealous of Alexandra and her golden-blonde tresses. Anything nice Alexandra ever received mysteriously disappeared.

Alexandra knew something was wrong with her father, but she was too young to understand. Her father, forever the happy-go-lucky guy, had turned to drinking to drown his troubles.

It sounds like your typical fairytale, but it isn’t. There are no furry creatures to help the princess prepare a gown for the prom, no fairy godmother to waive her magic wand and produce glass slippers. In fact, at age sixteen Alexandra found herself living on her own with no family contact and no prospects of a healthy, normal life.

Alexandra had only one advantage, if you could call it that. Alexandra was beautiful. But so far, her beauty had not opened any doors; actually, it had only caused her misery.

The only people who welcomed Alexandra were the outcasts. The parents of other losers in school fortunately didn’t care who slept over and what they did when they stayed the night. So, Alexandra Nicole, now deciding to go by Nicky, as she was no longer a princess, found herself wandering from house to house throughout her remaining high school years.